


Balls Out

by KittyViolet



Category: New Mutants (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Bad Puns, First Time, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Sexual Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 08:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21176726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyViolet/pseuds/KittyViolet
Summary: “Warlock,” she said. “Those are dangerous-- you’re going too fast. Anyway that’s not what the idiom means!"





	Balls Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoldenThreads](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenThreads/gifts).

“What do selffriends Roberto and Dani and other selffriends and futurefriend strangers mean,” Warlock asked Illyana, “by ‘Balls out’? Dani and others have recently stated ‘We are going balls out on this one’ and ‘Let us do it! Balls out!’ Self requires assistance processing selffriends’ repeated ambiguous language. Self hopes Illyanamagicselffriend is appropriate recipient of request for interpretive assistance.”

Illyana put down her glass of tea, her pinch of salt, her invocation handbook. “’Lock, of course you can ask me what's appropriate,” she said, touching the young technarch gently on what, in anything closer to a human being, would have been his forearm. It looked like a spindle made out of toaster parts. Warlock smiled. “When people say ‘Balls out,’ it is an English idiom. It means there’s a lot of team effort. Like ‘give it our all.’ It’s usually a good thing.”

“Aha!” said Warlock, manifesting a third and fourth eyeball and letting all four eyes spin, smiling. “Thank you Illyanamagicselffriend. Self would never have known.”

*

“Team meeting!” shouted Sam, running—but not blasting—through the mansion, gathering other New Mutants behind him as he led them into the kitchen. “I know we’re not supposed to go fight bad guys, but here’s a team project Headmaster Magneto won’t mind: we’re going to use our powers and wear our uniforms and help build a playground outside Pittsburgh. Melody’s friend lives there and they need some help to get it ready for the school year, and it’s close enough that we can get there today, far enough no one’s going to recognize our faces. What do you say?”

“I’m in,” Dani answered.

“Let’s go!” Berto exclaimed.

“The project seems good,” said Amara.

“I’m not sure how I can help,” began Doug, but Sam cut him off. “You can make signs in Hmong and Eritrean, right?” Doug nodded vigorously. “The kids in that neighborhood—and their parents, who might not read English—will love that. You’re coming. Anyway, we’re a team.”

“Aye, we give it all our effort, together!” Rahne cut in, her red buzz cut bobbing.

“Balls out!” said Warlock, smiling, making a periscope with his head, while from his wire hands emerged three, half a dozen, and then a dozen metal balls, which he juggled, so rapidly they began to blur. Then there were eighteen balls. Then Illyana lost count.

“Warlock,” she said. “Those are dangerous—you’re going too fast. Anyway that’s not what the idiom means. You’re not supposed to throw balls up in the air.”

The kind technarch turned pink, then red, then back to his normal array of shiny blues, blacks, greys. “Many apologies, selffriends! Allow self to try again. Let selffriends construct a playground together, giving all selffriends' best effort, balls out!”

He then extruded a cylindrical protuberance from the bottom of his torso, followed by two perfectly round objects attached to the protuberance, each the size of a baseball, one on each side of the cylinder. The whole, Illyana thought, resembled an old-fashioned cannon, or a malfunctioning seesaw. Then she figured out what it was supposed to be.

Unfortunately Rahne had seen it first. She covered her mouth while Illyana saw her forehead and cheeks turn the shade of tomato bisque. 

Dani saved them, sort of. “Warlock,” she said. “I share your commitment to our playground mission, but in our culture we do not display balls- not those kinds of balls—in public. Doug will explain it to you later.”

Doug patted his friend on the circuitboard-waffle-iron-hand.

*

“Selfsoulfriend,” Warlock asked, back in Doug’s bedroom. “Under what circumstances will selffriends and humanEarthresidents normally permit display of balls, if not when giving or when promising to give all of self’s effort balls out?”

“’Lock,” Doug said. “It’s a human privacy thing. We only show our balls—if we have balls; you know about half of us don’t, right?”

Warlock nodded; Doug went on. “Those of us who have balls like to show our balls to others only when we are alone with people we care for, in a way that makes us want to hold hands with them, or kiss them, and then when we are comfortable doing those things, we might want to show other parts of ourselves, or touch each other on those parts. Like, uh, balls. But only in private, ‘Lock. Not in a team meeting. And only with someone we care about so much.”

The alien’s eyes spun around for a few speedy cycles. Then he took Doug’s hand. “Warlock and selfsoulfriend are considered to be in private in selfsoulfriend’s bedroom, correct?”

Doug was not expecting that. Maybe he should have. “We are,” he said gingerly.

“Self and selfsoulfriendDoug already make regular contact involving hands, correct?”

“Uh, correct?”

“Then…. balls out!” And there it was again, right in front of Doug, right at the front of Warlock, right between the technarch’s legs.

It was Doug’s turn to blush. But he did not tell his selfsoulfriend to put his balls away.

**Author's Note:**

> Dreamed up alongside another writer who might not wish to be named, given the puns; gifted to GoldenThreads because GoldenThreads has written Warlock so well.


End file.
